La jodida fragilidad de los hogares en la Zona Euro

En un Working paper del BCE, "FINANCIAL FRAGILITY OF EURO AREA HOUSEHOLDS", se presenta un "Strest Test" de los hogares de la zona Euro en casos en que las variables más relevantes - tipos de interés, renta, empleo, precio de la vivienda - sufrieran importantes alteraciones. Como esto se hace con miras a medir el impacto negativo en lo prestamistas bancarios, me imagino que este estudio ha sido usado en el famoso Strest Test a la banca de la Zona. A lo mejor me equivoco.

Es un trabajo muy exhaustivo, que concluye que en su conjunto, los hogares de la zona Euro son sólidos financieramente, pero que en la algunos países "periféricos" los efectos de alteraciones de esas variables podría afectar a su solvencia como por prestatarios. (¿No son deliciosas estas frases que dicen que en una zona monetaria única grandes poblaciones de ciudadanos sufrirían grandes quebrantos, que el si. Que repercutiera en otras? )

El estudio es muy largo y no vale la pena resumirlo aquí. Quizás baste reproducir las conclusiones principales, que contienen indicaciones particulares para España no muy halagüeñas, pues es el país en que la combinación de factores adversos en tipos interés, empleo, y valor de los activos colaterales potencia más la exposición a quebrantos por parte de los hogares y de los bancos. Uno se pregunta cual será el efecto combina tuvo real de tantas adversidades re alimentándole unas a otras.

In terms of the impact on Exposure at Default the results are presented in Table 2 (Page 36) and can be summarised as:
1. Interest rate effect higher than income effect. However, in Greece the income effects (loss of job) substantially increase the exposure to default.
2. Major differences across nations. For example, "an increase in the interest rate by 300 basis points would lead to an increase in the stock of non‐ performing loans by almost 50% in Spain, while in France it would only increase by 10.3%".
3. "A combined interest and income shock has the strongest impact in Portugal, Greece and Spain – in all these countries the stock on non‐performing loans would increase by more than 30% as a result".
In terms of the losses of default (LGD) the results are presented in Table 3 (Page 37) and can be summarised as:
1. "the house price shock impacts the level of LGDs substantially, with Belgium in the lead ‐ a 30% decline in house prices leads to a more than doubling of LGD compared to the baseline."
2. This suggests that "for many Belgian borrowers" they are close to negative equity already.
3. "the impact of the combined shock, i.e. the interest, income and house price shock, on losses facing banks, a huge cross country divergence is noticeable. Losses of Spanish banks incurred from the household sector would increase by 140%, whereas they would only increase by 11.7% for the French banks."
Overall, taking the three impacts together, the ECB conclude that:
… the debts of the German and the French households are sufficiently covered with assets. To the contrary, the additional haircut on the value of the collateral may significantly increase losses faced by banks in Greece, Cyprus in Spain.

La referencia la he encontrado en el blog de Bill Mitchell, que hace un sangrante análisis de la incoherencia de esta estudio do la política del BCE.
Cabe preguntarse en que medida otra política económica después de la crisis hubiera alejado estos escenarios lúgubres. Para. Bill Mitchell, no hay duda:

Conclusion

The paper is fairly dry but paints a picture of continuing vulnerability in the Eurozone to rather slight changes in economic or monetary policy circumstances.

It is clear that the entrenched downturn and current stagnation has not provided households with the opportunity to build more security into their individual balance sheets.

The risk then is that the banking system becomes exposed to losses that the Member States are unable to deal with, given they surrendered their currency sovereignty.

A far better plan after the credit binge and housing boom would have been for Member States governments to support growth, which would have helped the households save and reduce their debt exposure.

But then we know about that.